Monday, May 11, 2009

Fareed Zakaria sat down with Wolf Blitzer this week to discuss the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the Taliban movement strengthens and both governments finally seem to be taking the situation seriously:

So what's the latest in this mess? On Wednesday, a piece from Ivan Watson showed a UN refugee campin Northwest Pakistan set up for people trying to escape the fighting in the Swat Valley region:

Why so many civilian casualties? John Roberts spoke to David Kilcullen, one of the foremost authorities on counter-insurgency warfare (he was crucial to the American change of war plans in Iraq), who explains how the Pakistani Army is fighting the wrong war, just as we once did in Iraq:

Don Lemon reported on Saturday on the possibility that the Taliban is using local residents as "human shields," and then ran a report from Reza Sayah on a family who fled the Swat Valley to come to a refugee camp outside of Islamabad, including one young son who needs a bone-marrow transplant:

Over the weekend, Ivan Watson was reporting on a group of boys who were trapped in their orphanage in the Swat Valley after the Pakistani army chose the roof of the four-story building to conduct their fight against the Taliban. The boys were huddled in the basement for several days, but then finally escaped and made their way to Peshawar. Ivan also says the latest estimate is that 360,000 people have come to UN camps in the past 10 days:

There was, at least, fantastic news from Iran today as US journalist Roxana Saberi was released from prison.